Acknowledging and Naming the Dominant American Culture

To understand what a dominant culture is, we first have to define culture in a general sense.  Sociologists define culture as “ everything that is socially rather than biologically transmitted…the symbolic and learned aspects of society” (Scott & Marshall, 2009). If that definition feels vague, it is because it is. Ultimately, culture encompasses everything that a group of people does- the language a group uses and their communication norms, what they eat, how they cook, how they dress, how children and older adults are cared for, the values they live by, their economic systems, religious practices, etc.

According to the Dictionary of Sociology, a dominant culture emerges in modern societies in which members of the society belong to many different cultural groups.  One of those groups’ language, values, and ways of being are adopted as the norm and imposed on the society’s members.  The establishment of the dominant culture occurs through legal, political, and economic pressure and through monopolizing media and communication (Scott & Marshall, 2009).  For example, Americans speak more than 350 languages. Although the United States lacks an official language, English is seen as the norm. All of our road signs are in English, as are our laws.  Most books and other media are in English. English usage has been imposed on Americans through the public school system. When enslaved people were brought to the United States beginning in the 1600s, they were required to learn to speak English to communicate with their enslavers.  In the 1800s, Native Plains warriors were held captive as prisoners of war.  During their captivity, prison staff forced assimilation to the dominant culture by cutting prisoner’s hair, dressing them in uniforms, and allowing English only.  The United States Government thought this was such a successful endeavor in assimilation that they established a Native Boarding School based on this model. Native children who attended these schools could be beaten for speaking their heritage languages (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2019).  As recently as 2017, California and Massachusetts had laws prohibiting bilingual education in public schools (Mitchell, 2017). Even in school districts that support dual language learning, the public school curriculum is primarily delivered in English.

In the United States, the dominant culture is White with European Ancestry, English-speaking, Protestant Christian, Cisgender, and Heterosexual.  People who fall outside of the dominant culture are often expected to assimilate into the dominant culture’s ways of being.  For example, let us return to the public school example.  Public schools in my community in Salem, MA base their winter school vacation around the Christmas holiday, while other major religious holidays such as Rosh Hashana, Eid Al Fitr, or Diwali are not observed on the school calendar.